Geography has been taught at Ostrava for over 40 years. At its beginnings, one department of geography existed, comprising both of physical and human geography, but in the 1990s the department split into two fundamental branches - physical and human geography. Since late 1990s human geography has been accompanied by regional development and simultaneously has begun to focus deeply on political geography. Today, human geography department is located in its own building only 10 minutes far from the city centre. There are currently 19 full-time members of staff with a wide range of teaching and research interests and more than 15 part-time members of staff who principally support teaching of foreign languages at the Department.

The Department of Human geography and Regional Development runs three study programmes at bachelor level – Geography and Regional Development, Political and Cultural Geography and Pedagogy and Teaching of Geography for elementary and secondary schools and three study programmes at master level – Geography and Regional Development, Political and Cultural Geography and Pedagogy and Teaching of Geography for elementary and secondary schools. In sum, the lecturers of the department teach courses for more than 400 students. Last but least, we have to mention also doctoral programme Political and cultural geography, in close cooperation with the department of Physical geography and geoecology we run doctoral programme Environmental geography.

The Department of Human Geography and Regional Development has two branches of scientific and research interest. The first one is specialized in regional development, which is conceived as a multilateral approach to the studied topic. Its fundament is combined from a selected branches of human geography – especially public administration, marketing of the city, geography of tourism, trans-boundary cooperation, geography of retailing, geography of transportation, social geography, agenda of the European Union, urban and rural geography, GIS and regional studies of continents (Africa, Asia, Latin and Northern America, Europe) with focus on socio-economic aspects.

The political and cultural geography branch of research interest specializes in international relations, political and economic geography, geopolitics, applied sociology, sociology of ethnicity and nationalism, ethnic minorities, cultural geography, historical geography and regional studies with focus on cultural and political aspects.

On the field of scientific research, the Department has following projects: